They've been married one month already, but Soijiro's new wife Chiyo has maintained a fake smile every day since. She says and gives away so little, in fact, the insecure samurai can't help but worry whether she's dissatisfied with the arranged match. Ever the beautiful and dutiful wife, Chiyo seems much too good for him — a lowly second son — so he swears to become the husband she deserves. Little does he know, however, the head-over-heels Chiyo is desperately trying to keep her wild attraction to him in check for propriety's sake.

My New Wife's Fake Smile has art by Kengo Matsumoto. English translation is done by Christine Dashiell. Lettered by Vibrant Publishing Studio. Published by Tokyopop (October 21, 2025). Rated T.

Kevin Cormack
Rating:

My New Wife's Fake Smile isn't a very satisfying read. It's one of those comedy manga where there's a single joke, and it's iterated on countless times in only very slightly different ways. The problem is that the joke just isn't very funny. Soijiro is a stoic but sensitive samurai, his family's second son who has no claim on his father's inheritance. This has left him with an inferiority complex, which leads him to excel with the sword as a way to give himself value. Chiyo is his new arranged wife, who is extremely shy and reserved. Together, they completely fail to communicate their wants and needs. If a short story focusing on the kind of problems that could be solved by a brief, simple conversation is your thing, by all means, give My New Wife's Fake Smile a shot. Sadly for me, even though each chapter comprises only four short pages, the volume drags due to repetition and a generally uninteresting premise and dull characters.

Chiyo's main issue is that she finds Soijiro incredibly hot and struggles to maintain a ladylike composure around him, leading to her strained smile. Soijiro misinterprets her pained expression as displeasure, and they never, ever tell each other what they're feeling, so there's minimal character development. Every single chapter is the same. It's excruciating, and I can't imagine being able to stand any further volume of this. While the character art is clean and attractive, and Chiyo's blushing smiles are on the right side of adorable, I can't forgive this very lightweight series for boring me to tears.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

I love historical pieces, especially when the creators play a little footloose and fancy free with the historicity. I was really hoping for Chiyo to be a complex character, using a bland expression and the duties of a samurai's wife to hide a whole story…but, no. This is a one-note comedy, in which the joke is that both Chiyo and Sojiro are in love and lust, but will not just have a conversation. Ahahahahah! Dysfunctional communications in heterosexual relationships are so hilarious and not at all everything wrong in the history of the world. ..Okay, maybe not everything. But a lot.

I will die on the hill that dysfunctional communication is everything wrong in “romantic comedy.” Kids, talk to one another. Then have sex. I beg you, please don't make us watch you not doing the only obvious thing for more volumes. If you really enjoy unresolved sexual tension for literally no reason whatsoever, I guess this could be a fun romp. Sojiro and Chito most definitely are in love with one another; they are husband and wife, with no children, and have no barriers at all between them consummating their love and living happily ever after, except that the two of them are incapable of reading the room.

There are the mildest of conflicts in this volume…Chiyo is accosted by street punks, a shopkeeper who knows Sojiro jokes about stealing him, and Chiyo's sister teases her. Each of these allows for one panel's worth of “Chiyo's shameless face” or Sojiro thinking Chiyo is hot, then this non-Newtonian plot resettles into a bland, flat surface.

I wish I had an “at least…” comment for this series, but there's just nothing here to hold on to. I hope some folks who love when a couple can and should be together, but for some reason, can't and aren't, find this manga and really love it. That person was not me. I spent the time reading, yelling, “Just *say* something already!”

Jean-Karlo Lemus
Rating:

If there's something I've learned from Zoo-Wee Mama!, it's that all you need is one good joke. But it better be a good joke! And unfortunately,My New Wife's Fake Smile doesn't have it. The set-up, which you'll be reminded of every chapter, is that Sojiro and his wife Chiyo are newlyweds. Sojiro has low self-esteem and angsts over his wife's forced Stepford smile, convinced that she hates him. In reality, Chiyo burns with perverse sexual lust for her gallant, chivalrous husband, and it's all she can do to keep herself in check with that grimace of a smile.

There are a number of genuinely cute interactions between the two, like Sojiro gallantly coming to Chiyo's rescue when she's accosted by men, or Chiyo whispering compliments to her beloved husband while he's half-asleep (he thinks she's cursing him under her breath). And hey, kudos to Chiyo for huffing her husband's clothing. Let your freak flag fly, hon, I guess. But that's about the long and short of it: Sojiro frets over Chiyo, Chiyo eats the eyecandy, the trumpet goes “whomp-whomp!”

I really wish this relationship of theirs went somewhere because the artwork is very cute, taking place in the Edo period. There are unique circumstances to the marriage that genuinely make the relationship fascinating, like Sojiro being the second-born son in his family (and thus ineligible for any kind of inheritance). Panels like Chiyo and Sojiro's wedding are drawn rather lavishly, and the bits where Chiyo goes ga-ga over Sojiro's thick, meaty wrists (you could bend a copper pipe around those things) are pretty great. If anything, My New Wife's Fake Smile whets my appetite for a Meiji-era love story between a samurai and his consort. But this might not be it. Weakly recommended.